Procrastination

In November I began a focused effort of telling everybody who would listen that I was going to finish my novel this summer. Why? Because I was ultimately trying to shame myself into actually putting more time into it, knowing that I frequently set goals and fail to deliver on them. To be fair, this is generally because my goals are unrealistic and unachievable - I aim far too high, and typically end up giving up entirely.

This time though it really really ISN'T my fault. I swear. Hehehe.

The first day of my vacation my laptop broke, hard-drive failure apparently. Everybody knows that you can't write a novel without a laptop, right? Wrong. I switched to pen-and-paper and typing on the desktop computer. This sort-of-kind-of worked, and then two days before I went back to work a full OS reinstall returned my laptop to my tender arms.

Still, I've made very little progress towards my goal. Sure, I'm writing semi-regularly, but not enough to actually finish in the timeframe I've specified. In February I start back at university so will need to devote some of my spare time to procrastinating/avoiding study, so it will be interesting to see what happens then. I've already started back at work fulltime as of this week, and am now procrastinating from work by updating my blogs. In a way, it's a good thing that I overcommit myself, because the more I have to do the more I actually get done (although, that also means there are more things that I don't finish at all...).

The problem with my novel is that I've almost planned it out too much. There are too many segments written, and it is hard to just sit down and write because I bump into something I've sort of done and then have to fit it in. That is not a good way to write a novel! It means I'm kind of editing at the same time... still, I love the concept and love the characters and I think it's a fun story. So I just have to get typing and fill in the blanks, then edit the crap out of it.

Watch this space. I'm sure I'll update when I'm trying to avoid doing something else.